Author, Breaking Glass: Tales from the Witch of Wall Street
This week, Ira spoke with Patricia Walsh Chadwick, author of Breaking Glass: Tales from the Witch of Wall Street. In this cultish episode of “Ira’s Everything Bagel,” Patricia talks about growing up in a cult (which started out as a religious community); the paradox of the community being intellectually stimulating, but very rigid; the one defining theme that held the cult together; why she was told to leave in her senior year, leaving her family behind; her will to survive with few places to go to for advice; going to secretarial school and keeping her eyes and ears open, because she didn’t know anything; how she got her first job on Wall Street as a receptionist and then became a research analyst; how she was aggressive when she began working there; why she became adaptable; picking up millions of dollars in checks when she was 20; getting her broker’s license before she was 21; her mentors (including one female); why, at 45, she had twins; and what she wants people to take away from her book.
Patricia Walsh Chadwick was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1948. She received her BA in Economics from Boston University and had a successful 30-year career in the investment business, culminating as a Global Partner at Invesco. Today she sits on a number of corporate boards and blogs on economic, social, and political issues. Her pro-bono activities include mentoring young women in high school and college and providing strategic planning advice to not-for-profit organizations. In 2016, Patricia co-founded Anchor Health Initiative, a health care company devoted to the needs of the LGBTQ community in Connecticut, and serves as the firm’s pro-bono CEO. She is the author of a previous memoir, Little Sister. A mother to twins, a daughter and a son, Patricia lives in Connecticut with her husband John.
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